


Love is Just a Way to Die

by rubycrowned



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, Season Finale, Season/Series 05, also is kinda caroline/stefan but not really, buuuut kinda not, im shit at things that arent angst, same goes for the epic bromance of damon/alaric - just friends guys, sorry - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-26
Updated: 2014-06-26
Packaged: 2018-02-06 07:01:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1848817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rubycrowned/pseuds/rubycrowned
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-season five finale: Elena is just trying to cope. So is everyone else</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love is Just a Way to Die

**Author's Note:**

> this is a fix-it fic (that was kinda ruined by my emotions and intrinsic love for angst soz guys) for my lovely Laura bc she was so very very not coping after the most recent finale (neither was I tho lbr).
> 
> this is what happens when my mind runs wild with what went on at the end of that ep
> 
> title taken from one of the songs used in the finale - "Love is Just a Way to Die" by I Am Strokes
> 
> (also note: i've entirely left out the bit where Tyler stopped healing bc i forgot about it initially ngl and im not sure where they're gonna take it plus it would've meant i had to change some other bits of this fic. for the same reasons, tyler isn't actually mentioned at all in this fic oops)

There is darkness.

There seems to be nothing _but_ darkness in those first days (weeks, months) for Elena. In those first days (weeks, months) after the gate is closed.

It’s like a gaping pit inside her, of all things lost; raw to the touch and unavoidable, as though every move she makes is constantly turning her further onto the stake.

And it’s hard.

It’s hard because there are faces everywhere. And there are faces who have always been and always will be there, and there are faces who Elena was so certain had been lost forever only to return – and now they only _appear_ to be lost (and broken, and as desperately _sad_ as that she sees etched in the face in the mirror). And there are faces who avoid her, and faces she avoids.

And there are faces that are missing and-

- _he promised._

***

Alaric is _back_.

He’s alive and he’s back and for the longest time he had been the closest thing they had to a responsible adult but now he seems as destroyed as Elena herself.

He puts on a good show.

He tells them stories – of all the drinking and fighting with Damon; of Elena and Caroline and Bonnie never _ever_ turning up for class, but still watching (always watching) with pride as they took the stage and graduated, after everything. There are stories when The Grill reopens of just how much Alaric missed Matt’s prompt bartending, despite the varying shades of judgement thrown his and Damon’s way (and no one ever mentions that this time there’s a seat to Alaric’s right that is never filled).

The stories make them all smile, no matter how small, no matter if it’s with eyes shining, or if the laugh that is choked out of them gurgles with unshed tears. Alaric still makes them smile.

But it’s the stories which he tells when it’s just him and Elena; when they meet on the staircase, two insomniacs haunted by their living nightmares. When Elena’s heartache can’t be dulled by the small comforts of her friends and the lines of guilt and self-hatred run deepest in every movement Alaric makes.

On these nights, Alaric tells different stories.

Of all that he’s seen. Of Elena losing, and fighting, and growing. Of Elena surviving.

And of Damon. Of how much Alaric missed him and how wrong it feels that their roles have been reversed; that as lonely as it was on the other side, he’d prefer that to this most days – because even on the other side Damon was still around, screwing shit up and blaming Alaric for not stopping him. Alaric tells Elena stories of Damon practicing speeches in front of the mirror, muttering to himself like a schoolchild with a crush, all the words he’d always wanted to say but never came out right. That he loved her, that he needed her. That he hoped that maybe he could be enough for her, because she made him want to be the person he saw reflected back in her eyes; the flawed but irrevocably good man she believed him to be. That Damon wanted to believe he could be.

Elena wants to tell Damon so much; that he _was_. That he was that person, and that every day part of her wishes he wasn’t, so that he would never have left her.

And she wants to tell Alaric that it’s not his fault; that Damon couldn’t let Alaric be left behind, not after he’d already spent so much time grieving for the friend he’d lost. That Damon would never let _anyone_ be left behind, to wait after him, because there was always that streak of doubt in Damon that gave way to an honest belief that he was less worthy than those around him. But the words choke Elena like so much cotton wool, stuck to the insides of her mouth.

On these nights, they both cry. But somehow, that feels okay.

***

Stefan drinks.

Drinks and hides.

The anguish Elena had seen in that first moment when he’d reappeared next to Bonnie; that look takes a long time to fade from his eyes.

There is a mistake, on the very first night, when Stefan finds Elena. She’s curled in a ball on the bed, staring blankly at the wall, trying to see anything past the image of Damon in the car – hand wrapped around hers, features flinching before the impact – seared into her retina. Later, she can’t remember much about what was going through her at the time – nothing beyond an internal scream of _no, this can’t be it, you promised, I love you, I loveyouIloveyou._

When he walks in, stumbling, he’s drunk off his ass in a way she’s only seen maybe twice before. Stefan sits next to her in silence for long moments, watches her. He stares at the wall - squints, as if he might make out whatever scene it is which holds her vision – then back to Elena.

It’s a sudden movement, when he moves forward, tries to kiss her. And it’s equally fast that she pulls away, shoving Stefan back in shock and barely concealed disgust. There’s only a millisecond before Stefan crumples. Like an implosion he falls in on himself.

That night, many hours later, when dawn is threatening to break grey into the sky, Stefan and Elena rock each other into the red rimmed sleep of the weary.

And after, he refuses to – can’t – look Elena in the eye for three weeks.

And Elena, well. She doesn’t go out of her way to fight him on it. Because it kills her how much part of her wants to scream and kick and shout whenever he’s near, how much that part wants to tell him that the wrong brother made it back.

There’s only one person Stefan lets near him, the only person to touch him as he mumbles slurred apologies to Damon, to Elena, to Lexi.

The only person he’ll let provide any small comfort to him is Caroline.

***

As always, Caroline is difficult.

It’s not that she causes trouble; in fact, she spends all her time ensuring everyone _else_ is able to function, to get through, to deal with the huge losses stolen from them.

It’s that she is so busy making sure that Elena gets out of bed, that Stefan isn’t passed out in another pool of booze and vomit, that Jeremy came home last night and that he and Alaric at least are eating.

It’s that the others can all see the cracks in her façade, the slight wince around her eyes, holding back the cascading grief of losing her best friend; of seeing the rest of her closest friends losing their own friends, brothers, lovers.

It’s that the others can see all of that, and yet are too busy falling apart themselves to reach out to Caroline and remind her that it’s okay to fall to pieces once in a while.

***

Sometimes Elena wishes they could turn Matt and keep him forever. Their anchor, their voice of reason; who, even as the frailest of them all, has no qualms about telling all and every vampire when they’re acting even dumber than they were last week.

The rest of the time she wishes she could turn back time; somehow keep him out of all their endless messes and let at least one of them survive without all the scars they’ve collected down to the bone.

But Matt is there; constant, grieving, human – yet still here, still surviving, against all the odds, and probably the least damaged of them all. And considering the year (life) he’s had, that’s really saying something.

He helps Caroline where he can – where she’ll let him – and keeps Jeremy company when Elena can’t bring herself to move.

He’s sad, mourns Bonnie along with the rest of them (and maybe even Damon some days).

Sad but not broken.

And Elena spends long moments wondering, trying to remember, if maybe humanity has always been stronger than all the rest combined.

Or if maybe it’s just Matt.

***

Jeremy stays close.

Elena can see it in his eyes that he wants to run, to get away from this place, these memories. Knows that it’s only her that keeps him here.

Doesn’t feel worthy of the tether most days.

Some nights, after a day of being unable to look him in the eyes without the guilt overwhelming her, she sits on the edge of his bed and runs her fingers through his hair – a poor emulation of the innocent brother and sister they once were (might have still been, in another life) – as his eyelids twitch with feigned sleep.

Here she will tell stories too, passing on memories in case there comes a time where she can no longer share the legacy of those so close to her heart. Of Jeremy, as a boy with nothing but kindness and hope in his eyes; of their parents, of inane family life so boring she aches with the wish for it; of Bonnie.

Sometimes, Jeremy speaks back.

Murmurs tales of young love lost too soon; once, twice, and then once more.

He tells her of a time with a familiar face next to him in the back seat of a car, hidden from view to most by the veil, warning him of Damon. That he would either be the best thing to happen to Elena, or the worst. How he isn’t sure which result became fact.

That particular night, Elena cries silently as she holds onto that last person left to her, clutches him to her and prays that she’s never made to let go. Not again.

She whispers secrets into the low light, the warmth between the covers. How she never believed it could all end like this.

How the loss of Damon, of Bonnie, have fractured her into pieces, like something has been shaken loose inside, and she’s rattling around broken. How she feels like the proverbial camel and these two straws weighed that of a mountain on her crushed spine. How it steals her breath away and she can’t always remember why she’d want to get it back. And yet a stab of guilty relief will remind her that it’s not as bad-

It’s not as bad as when it was Jeremy she had lost.

She refuses to flick the switch.

***

There is darkness.

And everything is hard.

And there are faces _everywhere_.

But it’s those faces that get Elena through. To move on.

Well. It’s those faces that help her find the tiniest specks of light in those dark days (weeks, months). To _move_ , although she’s still figuring out what ‘to move on’ might mean.

Some days she thinks it means a time when she can see further ahead than tomorrow; others, just making it to the dinner table to sit quietly with Alaric and Jeremy. Occasionally enough sun shines in that Elena can almost catch a glimpse of some future self – she thinks she might be happy there. On those days, she thinks she might still know what hope is.

Slow, achingly slow, the pain starts to recede.

It’s a spring afternoon when it happens.

Not a sunny day, not a nice day. Not one of those spring days when new life abounds and the world looks like an old advertisement for Easter.

This day is dark and grey, a torrential spring storm that flattens the barely-bloomed flowers and breeds alternating tension and release as thunder and lightning play out across the sky.

For the first time in a long time (and isn’t that always the way things happen? Elena will later wonder how long she’s been deprived of this moment) Elena sits in the window seat of her room (his room) and opens up her diary. She skips to the next blank pair of pages – is not so wholly fixed yet that she can bear to be reminded of the last things she wrote – and braces the book with her forearm as she uncaps her pen-

-and the shift is just enough that a loose scrap of paper falls to the faded carpet.

There’s no explanation, no apology (for the before, or the since or a broken promise). But that was never his style. There’s no cryptic _I’m coming_ nor a detailed plan to return them to her, because that wasn’t either. Elena thinks he may also know how fixated she would become (they would all become) if she received any vague indication that there was a way. Any way.

In the end it’s only three short lines. And only one of them counts, anyway. Only one that really counts.

Elena doesn’t write in her diary that day, after all. She tacks the note to her mirror; half-obscured by photos of them all on graduation day, of her parents, of herself and Damon curled quiet on the sofa – all as entirely misrepresentative and entirely true of her life as each other. And then she braces the weather to meet the others at The Grill and laughs when Matt regales them with his continued disbelief that the owners actually rehired him for the reopening – let alone made him manager.

And she thinks maybe next weekend they should all take a trip; they deserve an actual break.

And it’d be nice to make the words ‘road trip’ fun again.

***

_~~I love you~~ _

_~~It’s okay~~ _

_I know –D._

***

***

**Author's Note:**

> sorry.
> 
> oh. and i've never written for this fandom before so any feedback would be extra lovely.
> 
> sorry again.


End file.
